Johnson gasped and stared at his daughter.
“When was this?” he asked.
“Few hours ago,” Milosevic said. “She’s alive and well.”
He froze the picture and tapped his fingernail four times on the
glass.
“Readier,” he said. “Stevie Stewart. We figure this one is Odell
Fowler. And the fat guy is Beau Borken. Matches his file photo from
California.”
Then he hit play again. The camera held steady on the matting, from
seven miles up in the sky. Borken pressed his bulk to the floor and
lay motionless. Then a silent puff of dust was seen under the muzzle
of his rifle.
They’re shooting a little over eight hundred yards,” Milosevic said.
“Some kind of a competition, I guess.”
They watched Borken’s five final shots, and then Reacher picked up his
rifle.
That’s a Barrert,” Garber said.
Reacher lay motionless and then fired six silent shots, well spaced.
The crowd milled around, and eventually Reacher was lost to sight in
the trees to the south.
“OK,” Webster said. “How do you want to interpret that, General
Garber?”
Garber shrugged. A dogged expression on his face.
“He’s one of them, no doubt about it,” Webster said. “Did you see his
clothes? He was in uniform. Showing off on the range? Would they
give him a uniform and a rifle to play with if he wasn’t one of their
own?”
Johnson spooled the tape back and froze it. Looked at Holly for a long
moment. Then he walked out of the trailer. Called over his shoulder
to Webster.
“Director, we need to go to work,” he said. “I want to make a
contingency plan well ahead of time. No reason for us not to be ready
for this.”
Webster followed him out. Brogan and Milosevic stayed at the video
console. McGrath was watching Garber. Garber was staring at the blank
screen.
“I still don’t believe it,” he said.
He turned and saw McGrath looking at him. Nodded him out of the
trailer. The two men walked together into the silence of the night.
“I can’t prove it to you,” Garber said. “But Reacher is on our side.
I’ll absolutely guarantee that, personally.”
“Doesn’t look that way,” McGrath said. “He’s the classic type. Fits
our standard profile perfectly. Unemployed ex-military, malcontent,
dislocated childhood, probably full of all kinds of grievances.”
Garber shook his head.
“He’s none of those things,” he said. “Except unemployed ex-military.
He was a fine officer. Best I ever had. You’re making a big
mistake.”
McGrath saw the look on Garber’s face.
“So you’d trust him?” he asked. “Personally?”
Garber nodded grimly.
“With my life,” he said. “I don’t know why he’s there, but I promise
you he’s clean, and he’s going to do what needs doing, or he’s going to
die trying.”
Exactly six miles north, Holly was trusting to the same instinct. They
had taken her disassembled bed away, and she was lying on the thin
mattress on the floorboards. They had taken the soap and the shampoo
and the towel from the bathroom as a punishment. They had left the
small pool of blood from the dead woman’s head untouched. It was there
on the floor, a yard from her makeshift bed. She guessed they thought
it would upset her. They were wrong. It made her happy. She was
happy to watch it dry and blacken. She was thinking about Jackson and
staring at the stain like it was a Rorschach blot telling her: you’re
coming out of the shadow now, Holly.
Webster and Johnson came up with a fairly simple contingency plan. It
depended on geography. The exact same geography they assumed had
tempted Borken to choose Yorke as the location for his bastion. Like
all plans based on geography, it was put together using a map. Like
all plans put together using a map, it was only as good as the map was
accurate. And like most maps theirs was way out of date.
They were using a large-scale map of Montana. Most of its information
was reliable. The main features were correct. The western obstacle
was plain to see.
“We assume the river is impassable, right?” Webster said.
“Right,” Johnson agreed. The spring melts are going to be in full